President Bush has proposed to boost defence spending but cut spending on domestic healthcare in a $2.77 trillion budget unveiled last night.
The Bush plan would cut discretionary programmes outside national security by 0.5 per cent. Mr Bush wants to pare back or scrap 141 programmes, with education, cancer research and community policing programmes intended to bear the cuts.
Over the next five years the plan would cut $36 billion (€30 billion) from Medicare, a government programme which offers basic health care for the poorest Americans.
Mr Bush wants to make permanent his first-term tax cuts, which are set to expire after 2010, and to cut the budget deficit - expected to reach $400 billion this year - in half by 2009.
But Mr Bush proposed a record $439.3 billion defence budget, up 4.8 per cent from last year. On top of that, the White House will seek new financing for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With congressional elections looming in November, the fiscal 2007 blueprint was attacked by Democrats, who said the elderly and working Americans would bear the brunt of Mr Bush's fiscal mismanagement.
The budget is set for months of debate on Capitol Hill, with Democrats seeking to portray the administration as uncaring in advance of November's mid-term elections.